A well generally includes a wellbore (or “borehole”) that is drilled into the earth to provide access to a geologic formation below the earth's surface (or “subsurface formation”). A well may facilitate the extraction of natural resources, such as hydrocarbons and water, from a subsurface formation, facilitate the injection of substances into the subsurface formation, or facilitate the evaluation and monitoring of the subsurface formation. In the petroleum industry, hydrocarbon wells are often drilled to extract (or “produce”) hydrocarbons, such as oil and gas, from subsurface formations.
Developing a hydrocarbon well for production typically involves several stages, including a drilling stage, a completion stage and a production stage. The drilling stage involves drilling a wellbore into a portion of the formation expected to contain hydrocarbons (often referred to as “hydrocarbon reservoir” or “reservoir”). The drilling process is usually facilitated by a drilling rig that sits at the earth's surface and that facilitates a variety of operations, such as operating a drill bit to cut the wellbore. The completion stage involves operations for making the well ready to produce hydrocarbons, such as installing casing, perforating the casing, installing production tubing, installing downhole valves for regulating production flow, or pumping fluids into the well to fracture, clean or otherwise prepare the reservoir and well to produce hydrocarbons. The production stage normally involves producing hydrocarbons from the reservoir by way of the well. During the production stage, the drilling rig is typically replaced with valves that can be operated, for example, to regulate pressure in the wellbore, to control production flow from the wellbore, or to provide access to the wellbore. An outlet valve is often connected to a distribution network of midstream facilities, such as tanks, pipelines or transport vehicles that transport the production to downstream facilities, such as refineries or export terminals.
The various stages of developing a hydrocarbon well often include challenges that are addressed to successfully develop the well. For example, in an effort to accurately characterize a well, a well operator may conduct coring operations to extract and collect cores from the well. The cores may be assessed to identify characteristics of the well (and the surrounding formation) at corresponding depths, and the characteristics may be assembled to generate core-logs that characterize the well and the surrounding formation at different depths.